NFL News

The top and bottom stories in this collage on NFL news items shows that Google News apparently has an eye for the ladies on the sidelines.

As a relatively new football fan — I didn’t get into following the NFL until I was 25 — and coming from an area where college sports is not anything close to what it is here, I was always quietly amused at the concept of the cheerleaders in adult sports. In high school sports, you sometimes might need that “rah, rah, rah” pep squad, but having scantily clad dancers gyrating on the sideline doesn’t seem to me to add anything of substance to anything related to the event. When you’re dealing with a live audience whose population surpasses that of many suburbs, 5-8 girls wearing spandex and shaking their booty isn’t going to work the stadium into a frenzy.

But each team (who has them) promotes them on their websites, the cameras do tight zooms on them when going to commercial, and they have been apparently used as a sexual distraction on the opposing team. But here’s my question — of the major sports, why only basketball and football? Why not baseball? Why not hockey? (Oh, man, how awesome would it be to have the cheerleaders out on the ice during gameplay?)

What is it about football and basketball that says “Let’s put women on display for ogling” that isn’t there in hockey or baseball? As a Canadian, I’m also going to lobby for having curling cheerleaders, though it would be hard to drown out the yelling already present in that sport. And why limit ourselves to team sports? Let’s have the hot ladies of golf or tennis! And, since so many people these days are under the delusion that it’s a sport, NASCAR! (That’s a rant for another day — suffice it to say that not everything that’s a competition is a sport.)

We have that entire other side of cheerleading, too — where the cheerleading is the sport (or competition). Roving bands of cheerleaders roam the countryside, showing up on ESPN2 every once in awhile to jump around, be agressively happy, and occasionally shatter a femur — all for our entertainment! We need to combine these things all into one fantastic event that nobody would dare miss!

Imagine it, a real NHL hockey game being played while happy high school and college cheerleaders form pyramids and throw each other across the ice, while dancers in spandex and extra-short shorts gyrate behind the nets. With race cars!

Now that would be a sport!